Don’t blame the NCAA for Beau Pribula leaving Penn State during playoff

Before we all hop on the latest bandwagon to the end of college football as we know it, let’s collectively get smart and embrace the single basic concept we learned as children.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. 

Or in this case of ever-widening player empowerment in college athletics, you can’t have everything — and still want more.

Beau Pribula is a backup quarterback at Penn State, and took to social media Sunday to proclaim that the NCAA’s postseason transfer model has forced him to choose between participating in the College Football Playoff with Penn State, or entering the transfer portal. 

He then wrote it was “with a heavy heart” that he was entering the transfer portal.

You’ve got to be kidding me. 

It is here where I have the gross task of defending the NCAA, a dysfunctional, do-nothing collection of presidential blowhards who proclaim that, at heart, they have the best interest of all involved.

I don’t know what makes me want to puke more: speaking truth to this transfer portal nonsense, or defending the muckety-mucks at the NCAA. 

First and foundational: any player who enters the transfer portal doesn’t have to leave his school until he signs with another. So Pribula, a changeup quarterback who typically plays a handful of snaps a game, doesn’t have to leave the team. 

He can enter the portal, stay on the Penn State team through its College Football Playoff run and then negotiate with other schools. This has nothing to do with a finite number of scholarships available, and the horror stories (most of them true) of players entering the portal and eventually not finding a home.

Pribula is in the portal, and every school knows he’s transferring. If there’s a market for him in the portal, schools will wait to make a decision on a quarterback – the most important position on the field – until after Penn State’s CFP run. 

Not that this has to be said, but what the heck: there’s another portal opening in the spring, and the NCAA – foreseeing this potential CFP/portal problem – gave players participating in the new 12-team CFP an extension to the winter transfer portal beyond the Dec. 28 closing date.

In other words, there’s zero reason for Pribula (or any other college football player) to be staring at “an impossible decision,” as Pribula wrote on social media. 

Pribula is a communications major and graduated in three years from one of the top public universities in the country. This is not the “system” taking advantage of the player. 

This is the player working the system to his benefit.

It should come as no surprise that less than 24 hours after Pribula’s announcement, Penn State quarterback Drew Allar announced he was returning to State College in 2025.

It’s not that difficult to connect Pribula’s timeline from a lifelong Penn State fan, a boy who dreamed of playing for the Nittany Lions, to a player who has done everything asked of him but can’t win the starting job, to the disappointment of sitting another year behind Allar. 

Pribula doesn’t have significant game tape, and any school investing in him (scholarship, revenue deal, NIL deal) would do so based on potential. Not many Power Four conference schools are spending top dollar for portal potential.

In other words, the longer Pribula waits to leave Penn State, the less chance he has of connecting with a major conference school. 

This Penn State graduate, who has family that graduated from Penn State, who starred at Central York High School – about two hours southeast of State College – can’t be part of such a selfish move of leaving your team before the end of the season. 

So he makes it about the NCAA, the easy villain. 

Players already can earn off their name, image and likeness, and have free movement without the previous restraint of sitting out a season of eligibility. 

Beginning next season, players in all sports at universities will be paid from a media rights revenue sharing salary pool of at least $20.5 million. If the House vs. NCAA settlement case isn’t approved in July, it could be much more.

Everything players have asked for – including $2.8 billion in back pay to former players from 2017 forward – has essentially been handed over by the NCAA, hat in hand.

Now Pribula wants the NCAA to absolve him of guilt. Because a player who has done everything right at Penn State, who by all accounts has been the perfect teammate, can’t just walk away in the middle of a championship run. Somebody has to take the blame. 

Why not the NCAA?

Why not hop on social media and gin up support from the vocal pitchfork, and decry how the mean men and women at the NCAA are forcing the poor, misunderstood player to make a difficult life decision.

Sort of like the difficult life decision to go to Penn State in the first place. 

Look, players have been on the short end of this deal for three forevers, and only since 2021 have they rightfully begun to get their monetary footing. But you can’t play both sides of the story. 

You can’t be the one taken advantage of when you’re getting everything you want. 

You can’t complain about the NCAA keeping you down when you control movement and employment. Because that’s what this is now — no matter how university presidents and conference commissioners try to convince everyone it’s not with a variety of mental gymnastics.

You have a job. You have responsibilities. 

If you walk away and look for another job, it’s on you. Not anyone else. 

Nearly three years ago, Jayden Daniels left Arizona State and entered the transfer portal. He spent three uneven seasons with the Sun Devils, and decided it was time to leave. 

Five weeks later, in late March of 2022 and during the spring portal – after his Arizona State teammates used social media to share their thoughts on his departure – Daniels signed with LSU and had two years of eligibility remaining. He then led the Tigers to back-to-back 10-win seasons, and won the Heisman Trophy in 2023.

Maybe you can have your cake and eat it, too. 

Just don’t blame the NCAA when it doesn’t taste like it should.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.